Adam and Eve, not Ug and Eev!

Question from Dontay:
Evidence of dinosaurs has been found…museums show that cavemen existed…. But… How can cavemen be real if Adam and Eve are supposedly the first people on earth?

Answer by SmartLX:
If by “cavemen” you simply mean people who lived in caves and hunted and gathered for a living, then perhaps Adam and Eve’s immediate descendants did that once the garden of Eden was closed to them. The timing doesn’t work out at all when you count the supposed 34 generations from the Biblical Adam to the Biblical and historical King David and compare them to the scientifically estimated dates of the cavemen’s remains, but people who are motivated to prop up the story of Genesis will accept it anyway.

If on the other hand you mean Neanderthals and other departed species within the genus Homo, there you have a conflict which is less easily dismissed. The story goes that God not only made Man more or less in his present form (or a super-version that was huge and could live for centuries) but He made Man in his own image, which is poorly defined but usually taken to mean an image of perfection. “Lesser” or more primitive versions of Man don’t jibe with this idea at all. That’s why creationist explanations of the evidence simply assert that they were all just modern-type humans with primitive lifestyles.

As for dinosaurs, all evidence points to the fact that the last ones were dead millions of years before the first humans were born. Not so for most creationists; rather than deny they existed, many of them say dinosaurs were present on the Ark, and they’re depicted as such at the new Ark Encounter park in Kentucky. Any evidence or argument that so much as requires the expression “millions of years” is explicitly demonised.

49 thoughts on “Adam and Eve, not Ug and Eev!”

As I see it, the real problem at the heart of this issue is this:
The evidence (the data from the real world) shows that humans have evolved over millions of years, and in that process, there were once more primitive humans that weren’t like us but that were our ancestors. And the book shows that 6000 years ago, two perfect humans were created by a god. Those are the two cases, and they are in conflict, as you correctly see. So which is believable? Which is the one we would call true? In other words, what is truth?
We define truth as when a statement matches reality. If someone says that there is a chair in a room, we go to the room to check that statement. And if we see the chair, we say that the statement is true. And if we don’t see any chairs, we say that the statement is false. Reality and the evidence we observe in reality is what determines if a statement is true.
This is true for books also. If I read in a book, that there’s a chair in a room, I still go to the room. The room (the actually real place in the real world) is and has always been and is always going to be the one and only “authority” on what is true.
So back to the two options. If the evidence from the real world says one thing and a book says another, which one is true? Do you throw out reality for the sake of a book? Or do you accept that the book simply made a false statement?

Since the first Neanderthal fossil was discovered in the middle of the last century, their remains have been highly controversial. By the mid 1950s, some scientists were beginning to argue convincingly that Neanderthals are a sub species of modern humans (Homo sapiens) (Lewin, 1998), citing a wealth of evidence to support the view that Neanderthals were human.

Language

Some evolutionists have claimed that Neanderthals were incapable of modern speech, lacking the ability to produce the full range of vowels (Lieberman and Crelin, 1971; Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992), with flat non-flexing at the base of the skull, and the larynx positioned higher in the throat than in modern humans or even chimpanzees. The result of this computer reconstruction was that the resonating chamber at the back of the mouth was all but eliminated.

Many of these arguments have now been thoroughly refuted. A new and updated reconstruction done in 1989 by paleoanthropologist Jean-Louis Heim showed an essentially modern human flexation of the base of the skull (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992; Shreeve, 1995). More recently, the La Chapelle skull was compared to a sample of modern human specimens from the middle ages and found to be quite human (Frayer, 1993).

In 1983 one of the most complete Neanderthal skeletons ever found was discovered at Kebara in the Levant, which included the first fossil hyoid bone of a Neanderthal ever discovered. This bone is located in the throat and is directly related to the structure of the human vocal tract and is indistinguishable from that of modern humans (Arensburg et al., 1987).

Neanderthal Brains

A Neanderthal brain volume equals or exceeds modern human dimensions (Deacon, 1994), ranging from about 1200_1750 ml, and thus on the average about 100 ml larger than modern humans (Stringer and Gamble, 1993). Holloway (1985: 320) has stated “I believe the Neanderthal brain was fully Homo, with no essential differences in its organization compared to our own.”

Although there is no direct correlation between brain size and intelligence, Neanderthal brain volume certainly does not support views that argue for an evolutionary expansion of “Hominid” brains.

Neanderthal Anatomy

Neanderthal anatomy is essentially human in scope, with the same number of bones as humans, which function in the same manner (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992). However, there are minor differences in robusticity (thickness and strength). These differences are trivial and can be found on an individual basis in modern living populations (Lewin, 1998). Although there is no formal agreement of which physical characteristics are diagnostic of Neanderthal morphology, a suite of traits have been used to distinguish Neanderthal morphology. Cranial traits are listed in the table below.

Still one may wonder why the entire suite of traits are not found in modern populations, but consider that Neanderthals typically lived in extremely cold climate areas, genetically isolated by a post-flood ice age. That would have directly affected their anatomy and physiology (Stringer and Gamble, 1993).

Two ecological rules describe the relationship between the size and the shape of the extremities (limbs) and trunk anatomy. Burgmann’s rule regarding surface area postulates that body weight tends to be larger in cold climates. With two bodies of similar shape, the larger will have less surface area per unit of volume and will retain heat better in cold climates. Allen’s rule suggests that body limbs will be shorter in cold climates, reducing surface area that results in less heat loss. This is seen in the short tails, ears, or beaks in many animals living in cold climates. Humans that live in cold climates, such as Eskimos, are typically larger with shorter arms and legs. Since Neanderthals lived in near arctic conditions in many cases, one would expect them to have a stocky body build and short extremities (arms and legs) (Holliday, 1997). In fact, the limbs of Neanderthals from the warmer climates of Southwest Asia are relatively longer than the limbs of those living in ice-age Europe. When Neanderthal limb proportions, based on a mean index of tibia/femur length, called Crural Index, are plotted against mean annual temperatures. Neanderthals appear to be even more cold-adapted in their limb proportions than modern Eskimos and Lapps (Stringer and Gamble 1993; Stringer and Mckie, 1996).

In addition, Neanderthals lived a life style that put rigorous demands on their bodies as seen from numerous skeletal lesions, many the result of traumatic bone breakage. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992.) Further, it has recently been suggested, based on intense dental study, that Neanderthals may have had a greater longevity than modern populations. This may have also affected their anatomy (Cuozzo, 1998).

Table

Neanderthal Culture

There are a large number of cultural habits that distance Homo sapiens from animals. No other organisms, either living or fossil, made tools to make other complex tools, buried their dead, had controlled use of fire, practiced religious ceremonies, used complex syntax in their spoken grammar, and played musical instruments, yet we know from their fossils that Neanderthal engaged in all.

Deliberate burial of Neanderthal remains is well known from at least 36 sites with a geographical distribution over most of Eurasia (Gowlett, 1994), with at least 20 complete skeletons known (Lewin, 1998). Some graves have stone tools, animal bones, and flowers buried in the ground, along with the Neanderthal remains. At the Uzbekistan Neanderthal site of Teshik-Tash, is a boy’s grave surrounded by a ring of mountain goat bones, horns, and levallois tools indicating ritualism of some sort. Burial is known to have occurred in an unnatural posture, which demonstrates that a corpse was not simply dropped into a hole in the earth without preparation (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992). Burial implies an awareness of the after life and demonstrates the existence of formal ritual. Indication of strong social ties can be inferred from cases where Neanderthal individuals with severe crippling injuries were cared for (i.e., the Shanidar remains).

In 1996, pristine evidence of Neanderthal humanness came to light, when a cave in Slovenia produced a small flute made from the thigh bone of a cave bear. Four precisely aligned holes are punctured on one side of the four-inch-long bone (Folger and Menon, 1997). Thus cultural evidence strongly supports Neanderthal humanness.

Neanderthal (mitochondrial) DNA

The recent recovery of mitochondrial DNA from the right humerus of the Neanderthal remains from Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, has been of great interest to evolutionists and creationists alike (Krings et al., 1997).

Based on the comparison of modern human mt DNA and that taken from the Neanderthal, evolutionists have argued that the “Neanderthal line” diverged from the line of “hominids” leading to modern humans about 600,000 years B.P. without contributing mt DNA to modern Homo sapiens populations. This strongly implies that Neanderthals were a different species from modern humans.

However, the above noted interpretation is not scientifically justified. Lubenow (1998) has pointed out that the use of a statistical average of a large modern human sample (994 sequences from 1669 modern humans) compared with the mt DNA sequence from one Neanderthal is not appropriate. Furthermore, the mt DNA sequence differences among modern humans range from 1 to 24 substitutions, with an average of eight substitutions, whereas, the mt DNA sequence differences between modern man and the Neanderthal specimen range from 22 to 36 substitutions, placing Neanderthals, at worst, on the fringes of the modern range.

Conclusion

Neanderthals were human. They buried their dead, used tools, had a complex social structure, employed language, and played musical instruments. Neanderthal anatomy differences are extremely minor and can be for the most part explained as a result of a genetically isolated people that lived a rigorous life in a harsh, cold climate.

References

Arensburg, B. et al., 1989. A middle Paleolithic human hyoid bone. Nature, vol. 338:758-60.
Cuozzo, J. 1998. Buried Alive: The Startling Truth About Neanderthal Man. Master Books.
Deacon, T. 1994. The Human Brain. In: Jones, S. R. Martin, D. Pilbeam, (ed.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
Folger, T., and S. Menon. 1997 . . . Or Much Like Us? Discover, The Top 100 Science Stories (1996).
Frayer, D. 1993. On Neanderthal Crania and Speech: “Response to Lieberman.” Current Anthropology 34:721.
Gowlett, J. 1994. Early human mental abilities. In: Jones, S and R Martin, D Pilbeam, (ed.) Ancestors: The Hard Evidence. New York: Alan R Liss Inc.
Holliday, T. 1997, Postcranial evidence of cold adaptation in European Neanderthals. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 104:245-58.
Krings, M et al. 1997. Neanderthal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans. Cell 90:19-30.
Lewin, R. 1998. The Origin of Modern Humans. Scientific American Library.
Lieberman, P. 1984. The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Lieberman, P. 1989. The Origin of Some Aspects of Human Language and Cognition. In: P. Mellars and C. Stringer (eds.), The Human Revolution. pp. 391-414. Edinburgh University Press.
Lieberman, P. and E. Crelin, 1971. On the Speech of Neanderthal. Linguistic Inquiry, 2:203-222. Mayfield Publishing Company.
Lubenow, M. 1998. Recovery of Neanderthal mt DNA: An Evaluation. Creation Ex Nihilo, Technical Journal, vol. 12(1) pp. 87-97.
Shreeve, J. 1995. The Neanderthal Enigma. Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins. William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Stringer, C. and C. Gamble 1993. In Search of the Neanderthals. Thames and Hudson.
Stringer, C. and R. Makie 1996. African Exodus: The Origin of Modern Humanity. Hold and Co. New York.
Trinkaus, E., and P. Shipman 1992. The Neanderthals: Changing the Images of Mankind. Alfred A. Knophf, New York.
Wolpoff, M. and R. Caspari. 1997. Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction. Westview Press.
* Dave Phillips earned the M.S. in physical anthropology from California State University, Northridge, in 1991 and is now working on his Ph.D. in paleontology.
Cite this article: Phillips, D. 2000. Neanderthals Are Still Human! Acts & Facts. 29 (5).”
You would like some facts. Well the fact is, you have not seen the evidence. You are accepting what someone else has said is evidence and what their interpretation is of that evidence. We know that because of their bias, many have fudged their interpretation and made up evidence to accentuate what they believe and downplayed any evidence that would cast doubt on their theories. It is very evident from many archeological digs that there have been other cultures, although seemingly less advanced than we due to a lack of scientific nic nacs, these cultures were just as advanced or more so than we are today, having a grasp of sciences that we are awed by. So if they were at least just as advanced as we are today, then where did they receive their knowledge. It truly does seem that maybe we are the neanderthals, having lost knowledge that we are rediscovering. One of the first would be that there is God.

Well Gerald, thank you for posting the article from the Institute for Creation Research, which is not a scientific website or conducts scientific research. What other websites, universities, research publications, or scientific journals did you research? If I am wrong please tell me, but I am going to assume the answer is “zero” given your previous track record at this website.

The article is rather fraught with leaps of logic and bad conclusions. Please take the time to research each area yourself to verify this, don’t take my word for it. For the sake of brevity so that my reply would not become burdensome to write or read, I picked the last area, DNA, to dig into. I could have dug into any of the areas of concern mind you, but I decided to pick the last one for no other reason than it was the last one. In other words I did not try to avoid any particular topic.

The claim that the Neanderthal genome comes from “one Neanderthal” is ludicrous. Two mitochondrial DNA samples have been taken from the Feldhofer Grotte alone. There are three distinct samples from the Sidron Cave in Spain, which produced a Y-chromosome not found in humans at all. 3 females from the Vindija cave in Croatia had mt DNA extracted. An infant from the Mezmaiskaya cave in the Caucasus region of Russia had mt DNA extracted. Europeans have the most amount of common DNA with Neanderthals, with Asians coming in a close second, while African humans have hardly any at all. As Neanderthals lived in Europe and eastern Asia, and not Africa, this supports the idea of limited interbreeding in the Neanderthal areas. This article has a lot of information:http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/sequencing-neanderthal-dna

One thing it states on page 3: “The sequence of our close hominin relative also shows us how humans are unique. Researchers found 78 sequence differences that would have affected proteins in which Neanderthals had the ancestral state and modern humans had a newer, derived state.” There is simply no support for the claim that Neanderthals were genetically the same as humans. They weren’t.

Your paper arguing that Neanderthals and humans are the same species provides a perfect example of creationists jumping to conclusions based on limited data. At the time most bona fide researchers were holding back on the species question waiting for more data to come in. Creationists, as usual, were more gung ho with their pronouncements and, as we shall see, once again made complete fools of themselves. Since the ICR published that highly selective ‘opinion piece’ we no longer have to rely on mtDNA because the complete Neanderthal genome was sequenced a decade later. We now know that Phillips was wrong; Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens are distinct species.

Ironically, when you posted your comment I was in Africa (I’ve just spent several weeks there) walking around with my genome containing 2-3% Neanderthal-derived genes, among people who possess no Neanderthal-derived genes at all. Yet if Neanderthal-derived genes were identical with human genes we would expect some degree of geographical variation but it would be highly unlikely to the point of impossibility for such widely ranged and genetically diverse human populations as are found in Africa to exhibit no Neanderthal-derived genes at all.

Even more damning to your claim is that while we identify some similarities between Neanderthal and human X-chromosomes no human has ever been found with any genes derived from Neanderthal Y-chromosome. The two chromosomes are completely different. That alone suggests different species.

The biological definition of a sexually reproducing ‘species’ is ‘any group of living organisms capable of exchanging genes by successfully interbreeding’. But Neanderthals and humans would have been incapable of successfully interbreeding. Neanderthal males who bred with human females would almost certainly only have been able to produce hybrid female children. Even in the unlikely case that a hybrid male was born it would have been infertile. In either case the male hybrids would comprise a genetic dead-end. In other words, speciation was occurring.

How do we know this? Well unlike creationists we don’t just make stuff up and feed it to the gullible. We actually collect data and analyse it. We find four histocompatible-antigen genes on Neanderthal Y-chromosome (PCDH11Y, TMSB4Y, USP9Y, KDM5D) that differ from human versions in such a way that the first three would cause tissue rejection in the event of an organ transplant (and similarly attack a male hybrid foetus resulting in the death of the foetus and likely the mother too) while the fourth gene variant causes spontaneous abortion in humans.

So the genetic evidence demonstrates that Neanderthals and humans are genetically related species that share a common ancestor but they were obviously not the same species. Think goats and sheep or donkeys and horses. Genetically related similar species with a common ancestor that cannot fully interbreed.

Some creationists used to argue (right up till the 1960s believe it or not) that the different ‘races’ of humans were actually separate species. Of course, the simple observation that any and all humans can ordinarily successfully interbreed (and subsequent genetic analysis of course) put paid to any notion that humans comprise different species. Just as genetic analysis has now put paid to the notion that Neanderthals and humans are the same species. BTW, arguing that:

(i) Neanderthals were human on the basis that “Neanderthal anatomy is essentially human in scope, with the same number of bones as humans, which function in the same manner” is a little hypocritical of a creationist. Humans and chimps share many physiological features yet no-one seriously suggests they’re the same species.
(ii) Arguing that Neanderthals were human on the basis that they had rudimentary music and buried their dead etc is similarly weird. If a spaceship came down crewed by aliens who were primate shaped and had music and buried their dead but were genetically distinct from humans, would you seriously argue that they were, in fact, human? I somehow don’t think so.

If the Bible neglects to mention species genetically related to humans but aren’t fully human then the Bible is just plain wrong. And if creationists continue to claim that Neanderthals and humans are the same species then they’re going to have to rely on a novel definition of ‘species’; one that isn’t recognised in biology.

What evidence. Where is this evidence. We have never discovered any kind of skeletal remains that do not appear human. All we have are those, who look at evidence and say, “not human” When we as humans appear different on every Continent. Some short, some tall. Some large craniums, and some not so much. But all Human. Where is there any evidence of Evolution. Maybe some evidence of adaptation, but nothing to show that we have never been exactly what we are today. Now there is evidence that we are being subjected to breakdown. Because it seems we are not as healthy as those who were created in the beginning. And it does appear that our intelligence leaves much to be desired compared to our forefathers. But we have found no evidence where we or any other species has ever come a different species, or that we are being transformed now.

So basically, after considering the information given to you by Tim and myself re neanderthals, these are the conclusions you’ve come to:

(i) you don’t have to share the human genome to be considered human
(ii) you don’t have to share all human morphological traits to be considered human
(iii) you don’t have to be able to successfully interbreed with humans to be considered human

But human beings aren’t animals……….Gerald, just think about the implications of what you’re saying.

Where is the evidence that shows that man was ever a neanderthal. All evidence shows that Man has always been produced as a Man, and woman as a woman. There is nothing that shows that shows that man had to evolve to be Man, only that there were different Men and women with different features. Just as today, there are men and women being born over all the earth with different features. If we had evolved into being what we are today, from what did we evolve and why did we end up the way we are. Why, don’t some of our ancestors have wings? Surely there were cliff dwellers at some point of our evolution, that would have found it great from evading marauding packs of wolves and saber tooth tigers. Or even the occasional T Rex. Why aren’t there any forms of fossils that showed some kind of “nope send me back to the drawing board” fossils because since the transformations were haphazardly, introduced, because there was no kind of
” intelligence ” behind the evolving yet somehow evolution got it so right as to make us so right the first, ok, the second or third time, that we were good to go, as soon as feet hit the ground. How is it that some of the most brilliant minds, designing some of the most awesome things, need to go back to the drawing boards so many times, yet some kind of what of an organism, with only who knows what, to guide its actions, was able to produce another organism with only, who knows what for an innate sense of striving for survival, for superiority, for ego, or for aesthetics, somehow, produced a working model of human that later became able to evolve into us today. And all without leaving dried out fossilized husks of was going to be us, but didn’t fit the bill. But supposedly it did it over millions of years, and still we can’t find any discarded ” acme rejects ”
And the Atheist says to believe it, without questioning the shear scatterbrained thought of it all. How many times are we to discount the questions of impossibilities that arise from all the ” I said it so believe it ” even though there are mountains of evidences that should cause us to hold up the red flag and cry fowl. How many times should we ignore all the other Scientists who have stood up and said that the Atheist has it all wrong. That it actually looks like an ” Intelligence” was behind it all. That Evolution without being guided by an “Intelligence” behind it could not do what Evolutionist are saying an unintelligent microbe or other one celled plankton, produced the final model of homo sapien. And do it especially in just one or two attempts. Why are some of the other brilliant minds even milling over and embracing this other impossible feat of accidentals theories of how we just suddenly got here. We should find husks of pre neanderthal species, that had their noses turned up the wrong way, or the support structure not right, the respiratory system, not sufficient, or the circulatory system, not feasible. Somewhere down the supposedly long path of time, because of the lack of “yankee ingenuity ” we should be seeing “rejected” imprinted on the husks of pre humans somewhere down the line. Are you all so dense or proud that you can’t recognize the fact that, ” it just isn’t possible “? There are just too many unseen, unimaginable, variables, to have to calculate and anticipate, for just the production of this Universe accidentally, to be able to accept as being done randomly, ( why do I say, that we couldn’t know all the possible variable, because if we could know, we would have duplicated how this Universe came to be) but the Atheistic Scientists wants us to believe their baloney, that it all happened by chance. And now they want us to swallow even more baloney, that life itself, in all of its intricacies happened by something as simple as an accident. Some mindless, meaningless, glob of plasmodium jelly, happened upon, or into, some kind of whatever, and during some kind of surge of whatever, became our fore parent. Getting it right so often as not to become extinct, in what had to have been one of the most inhospitable environments around, and time and time again, got, it right long enough as to make us what we are today. All without any nudging of an “intelligence”, all by accident. Yea, if your going to swallow that, I got some cure all tonic that will get you right as rain, that I’d like to sell you. Or maybe you’d like to own the United States. I have the deed to that also.
Come on fellow human beings. Are you not tired of hearing all of this malarky. We are more than what we are being asked to accept. We are of celestial stock. We are children of Someone who is King of kings and Lord of lords. We were not simply spoken into existence, like all the the other things that we can handle and touch and see. We were scooped out of the earth and fashioned out of love. God’s love. Made to live forever. He caressed our bodies fashioned by His eternal thoughts and gave us life by lovingly kissing us and imbuing us with life from on high. Why settle for these lies that comes from the father of lies, the devil. Don’t miss out on eternal life by not allowing yourselves to question, what is being perpetrated by those in this world who are not willing to accept the fact that ” we are fearfully and wonderfully made “

Gerald writes: [Where is the evidence that shows that man was ever a neanderthal. All evidence shows that Man has always been produced as a Man, and woman as a woman. There is nothing that shows that shows that man had to evolve to be Man, only that there were different Men and women with different features.]

Man wasn’t ever a Neanderthal. Each species evolved from a common ancestor. But because of genetic similarity, Man and Neanderthals were able to interbreed, and this allowed for some of their genetic material to become captured in ours.

As to your ludicrous claim that “there is nothing that shows that man had to evolve to be Man”, I point out the repeated information that has been presented to you time and again at this website by myself and others as to why that simply isn’t true. Genetic studies have been named, which you haven’t read or pursued. Requests made for you to visit universities or research institutes have gone unfulfilled. Evolution is a verifiable theory that you yourself can research, and you simply haven’t put forth the effort. Instead, we have to constantly answer your fraudulent claims over and over again, with no end in sight.

[If we had evolved into being what we are today, from what did we evolve and why did we end up the way we are.]

We ended up the way we did because some of the mutations we received to our genome were beneficial which allowed for greater success. The mutations themselves were random in nature. This has all been explained to you before of course.

[Why, don’t some of our ancestors have wings? Surely there were cliff dwellers at some point of our evolution, that would have found it great from evading marauding packs of wolves and saber tooth tigers.]

Tell you what, you prove we were cliff dwellers at some point, and then we can talk about wings. Got any evidence of that? Until you do there’s no point about talking about wings…

[Or even the occasional T Rex.]

Nothing like a humanoid lived at the time of the dinosaurs. What a ridiculous comment on your part.

[Why aren’t there any forms of fossils that showed some kind of “nope send me back to the drawing board” fossils because since the transformations were haphazardly, introduced, because there was no kind of
” intelligence ” behind the evolving yet somehow evolution got it so right as to make us so right the first, ok, the second or third time, that we were good to go, as soon as feet hit the ground.]

For two very specific reasons, both of which have been explained to you previously. First, fossilization is a rare event, and the odds that any particular creature becomes fossilized is pretty rare. Second, it would take many succeeding generations for something with a BAD mutation to survive and pass on it’s genes to the next generation, for tens of thousands of generations, even though it has a BAD mutation that decreases it’s ability to survive. If it’s bad, it’s going to fail to spread into the larger population long before additional bad mutations can be added to it to the point where it has a full fledged, physical change that obviously didn’t survive. Your question is beyond ridiculous, and lacks common sense.

More later, I can only take so much of your repeated ignorance of scientific facts…

What data shows that you men have evolved over millions of years? How can you continue to believe this when so many other evolutionists have declared that there fellow evolutionists have even said that the evidence does not point to evolution?

HI THERE
ALL I HAVE TO SAY TO THIS C..P IS THAT, FIRSTLY, THERE IS NO GOD, OR AT LEAST THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH AN ENTITY, AND SO, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE THERE IS NO SUCH ENTITY THAT PEOPLE CALL ‘GOD’.
SECONDLY, EVEN IF THERE WERE GOD, THIS ENTITY WOULD EITHER BE A FEMALE, COS FEMALE GENDER IS PRIMAL, THE MALE GENDER KINDA EVOLVES FRO FEMALE ONE, THUS MALES HAVE NIPPLES, OR OF NEUTER GENDER, IN WHICH CASE IT WOULD HAVE NO GENDER.
I LEAVE ALONE WHAT WOULD A GOD OF NEUTER GENDER DO AS FOR CREATION OF HUMANITY, AN ADAM FIRST, AN EVE FIRST, OR BOTH AT THE SAME TIME, SO THAT THEY HAVE DIFFERENT SETS OF GENES. PROBABLY THIS, COS GOD IS ALL-KNOWING, SO IT WOULD KNOW BEST, TO CREATE A COUPLE AND NOT EVE FIRST, AND SURELY NOT ADAM FIRST, ADAM WHO IS AN OUTCOME OF EVES BODY, FOR HAVING AN Y CHOROMOZOME AND NOT AN X.
BUT, IN CASE GOD IS FEMALE, COS ONLY FEMALES HAVE WOMBS, FEMALES ARE MOTHERS, THEN THIS GODDESS WOULD CERTAINLY CREATE FIRSTLY EVE AND THEN MAKE AN ADAM FROM AN EVE’S RIB. BUT, SINCE GOD, FEMALE, MALE OR NEUTER, IS ALL-KNOWING, SO THEN EVEN A FEMALE GODDESS WOULD HAVE CREATED AN EVE AND AN ADAM AT THE SAME TIME BUT WITH DIFFERENT SETS OF GENES, OTHERWISE WHEN EVE HAD HER FIRST CHILD FROM ADAM, BE IT SHE FIRST OR ADAM FIRST, THEY WOULD HAVE THE SAME GENES, AND THUS THIS WOULD BE CLONING OF EVE OR ADAM, RESPECTFULLY.
BUT THIS IS OF COURSE ALL C..P, COS THERE IS NO GOD, SWALLOW THE BITTER PILL THAT YOU WILL DIE AND NEVER LIVE AGAIN. SO BETTER LIVE IT TO THE FULL NOW IN THIS ONLY LIFE YOU HAVE. CHEERS.

What this universe and we are not good enough evidence to you? What would you like for the evidence to be, a piece of God in a test tube? Well God has provided even better, us. Made in His image. Able to create on a lesser scale to a lesser degree. But all showing promise.

False leap of logic, Gerald. Can you supply us with even one single shred of empirical data that your particular god being exists? As we’ve amply covered before on this website – no, you cannot. A “piece of god in a test tube” would be wonderful proof, but of course you don’t have that. Instead you claim that the existence of humans is proof of your god being. We’ve also amply explained before on this website that the existence of something doesn’t prove causality. We could also say that humans were made out of clay and had life breathed into them by Nuwa (Chinese) or Enki (Sumerian) or Viracocha (Incan) or any of the many other creation stories that the Bible parrots. Those claims can also state that the existence of humans prove that they were caused by those gods, right? But, or course, you do not subscribe to any of THOSE stories, even though they have the EXACT same level of proof as you use for your claim…

At least they show other than the lame excuses that we happened by accident. With all these cultures showing the same thing, shows that there was a commonality that should not be tossed aside as though it is only fable.

I forgot to add that all the other theories of how this universe and we got here given by Atheists have been made with so many holes in them, that this also should let us know that there is a God. Up to now, even Atheists have admitted that there is way too much order and complexity but that it just adds to the mystery of the big bang theory.

Another flagrantly erroneous statement by you, Gerald, that has also been corrected many times over on this website. Over half of the scientists in America are believers in a god and/or are religious, according to poll numbers. The theories of the universe are made up, in no small part, by religious people. Their theories are based on empirical data and evidence, something that you lack completely in every single Christian claim you’ve ever made on this site. To claim they are atheist claims is patently untrue. Then you make a rather ridiculous statement that “Atheists” (with a capital “A” no less) have “admitted that there is way too much order and complexity” in the universe. LOL, really? Where? Link us to this mystical “Atheist” site or research paper that claims such at least, so we can read it ourselves. Since atheists are nothing more than people that lack belief in gods, I find it amazing that they are getting together as physicists and astronomers and researching the universe. Where, pray tell, is this going on?

I think it might be a good idea for you to rein in your rhetoric, Gerald. In my opinion you tend to make really outlandish claims that aren’t based in reality at all, and which can be shown to be inaccurate nonsense, to the detriment of your side of the argument.

What are you talking about. Most if not all those Scientists who are Christians, believe that God created every organic and inorganic matter. Most of it by just speaking it into existence. But man, was a intimate touch part of God’s creation. And many of these Scientists are put down for speaking against the theory of Evolution. But this is from this site “https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/why-atheists-change-their-mind-8-common-factors/4729/” “2. “EXPERIMENTATION” WITH PRAYER AND THE WORD OF GOD.

The Word of God is living. It has power beyond human comprehension because it is “God-breathed.” God speaks to man in many ways; but especially through prayer and the reading of the inspired Scriptures. When curiosity (or even interest) of non-believers leads to experimentation with prayer or reading the Bible the results can be shocking, as many converts attest.

One former atheist who was profoundly affected by prayer and the Scriptures is author Devin Rose. On his blog, he describes the role that God’s Word played in his gradual conversion process from atheism to Christianity:

“I began praying, saying, “God, you know I do not believe in you, but I am in trouble and need help. If you are real, help me.” I started reading the Bible to learn about what Christianity said…”

Once Rose began to read the Scriptures and talk to God, even as a skeptic, he found himself overwhelmed by something very real:

“Still, I persevered. I kept reading the Bible, asking my roommate questions about what I was reading, and praying. Then, slowly, and amazingly, my faith grew and it eventually threatened to whelm my many doubts and unbelief.”

And the rest was history for the now rising Catholic apologist and author of The Protestant’s Dilemma.

Similarly, renowned sci-fi author John C. Wright distinctly recalls a prayer he said as an adamant atheist:

“I prayed. ‘Dear God, I know… that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case. If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you, or that you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me…If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter, John Wright.’”

Wright soon received the answer (and effect) he did not expect:

“Something from beyond the reach of time and space, more fundamental than reality, reached across the universe and broke into my soul and changed me…I was altered down to the root of my being…It was like falling in love.”

Wright was welcomed into the Catholic Church at Easter in 2008”
Enjoy. I was thrilled. And you can be one who can help others to accept God. He is there. Yes, there with you. Just waiting for you to dare Him to reveal Himself.

“http://godevidence.com/2010/08/quotes-about-god/”
““The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.”
–Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, as cited in his book Descent of Man.”
“http://www.strangenotions.com/flew/”
“Antony Flew: There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins’ comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a “lucky chance.” If that’s the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.Wiker: You are famous for arguing for a presumption of atheism, i.e., as far as arguments for and against the existence of God, the burden of proof lies with the theist. Given that you believe that you only followed the evidence where it led, and it led to theism, it would seem that things have now gone the other way, so that the burden of proof lies with the atheist. He must prove that God doesn’t exist. What are your thoughts on that?
There Is a GodFlew: I note in my book that some philosophers indeed have argued in the past that the burden of proof is on the atheist. I think the origins of the laws of nature and of life and the Universe point clearly to an intelligent Source. The burden of proof is on those who argue to the contrary.
Wiker: As for evidence, you cite a lot of the most recent science, yet you remark that your discovery of the Divine did not come through “experiments and equations,” but rather, “through an understanding of the structures they unveil and map.” Could you explain? Does that mean that the evidence that led you to God is not really, at heart, scientific?
Flew: It was empirical evidence, the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence. Scientists as scientists cannot make these kinds of philosophical inferences. They have to speak as philosophers when they study the philosophical implications of empirical evidence.
Wiker: You are obviously aware of the spate of recent books by such atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. They think that those who believe in God are behind the times. But you seem to be politely asserting that they are ones who are behind the times, insofar as the latest scientific evidence tends strongly toward—or perhaps even demonstrates—a theistic conclusion. Is that a fair assessment of your position?
Flew: Yes, indeed. I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.
Two noted philosophers, one an agnostic (Anthony Kenny) and the other an atheist (Thomas Nagel), recently pointed out that Dawkins has failed to address three major issues that ground the rational case for God. As it happens, these are the very same issues that had driven me to accept the existence of a God: the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the Universe.
Wiker: You point out that the existence of God and the existence of evil are actually two different issues, which would therefore require two distinct investigations. But in the popular literature—even in much of the philosophical literature—the two issues are regularly conflated. Especially among atheists, the presumption is that the non-existence of God simply follows upon the existence of evil. What is the danger of such conflation? How as a theist do you now respond?
Flew: I should clarify that I am a deist. I do not accept any claim of divine revelation though I would be happy to study any such claim (and continue to do so in the case of Christianity). For the deist, the existence of evil does not pose a problem because the deist God does not intervene in the affairs of the world. The religious theist, of course, can turn to the free-will defense (in fact I am the one who first coined the phrase free-will defense). Another relatively recent change in my philosophical views is my affirmation of the freedom of the will.
Wiker: According to There is a God, you are not what might be called a “thin theist,” that is, the evidence led you not merely to accept that there is a “cause” of nature, but “to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being.” How far away are you, then, from accepting this Being as a person rather than a set of characteristics, however accurate they may be? (I’m thinking of C. S. Lewis’ remark that a big turning point for him, in accepting Christianity, was in realizing that God was not a “place”—a set of characteristics, like a landscape—but a person.)
Flew: I accept the God of Aristotle who shares all the attributes you cite. Like Lewis I believe that God is a person but not the sort of person with whom you can have a talk. It is the ultimate being, the Creator of the Universe.”
And please read about C.S. Lewis. His story is awesome.

You need to do your own research before you make statements that could later come back and bite you. The title taken by the “Institute of Creation Research” was not chosen lightly. It has on staffeta many lead researchers in their fields. And as I found out not all are Christians. But they are true Scientists, in that they accept the evidence no matter in which direction it leads. And these Scientists testify that all the evidence from their research leads to the conclusion that an Intelligent being made everything. Some stop short of calling that Intelligence God, but that still leads us far away from the lies that the Atheistic community is trying to bamboozle down the throats of the people of this world.

Gary just what are acquainted with? As I have state over and over again, the Atheistic community, have time and again made up theories and sought to produce evidence and twist evidence to support their theories, even though they have had evidence that would have caused a true Scientist to throw out those theories. From the very beginning the theory that matter could have been somehow brought into existence from nothing, should have been discounted, not ever having observed matter come from out of nothing before. Where could all these planets and rocks and asteroids come from? The Atheist says from nothing. But why doesn’t matter still pop out of nothing now? No, it took Someone who had the ability to manipulate and organize and fashion everything from the molecular level on up.
Then the Atheistic community decides to show even less intelligence to theorize that the same nothingness that brought forth matter, by accident, now somehow brought life into existence, by accident. Now I ask you, matter on its own, which some say cannot be created or destroyed, is, or should by the aforementioned concept, be impossible to create,yet the Atheist claims that something unintelligent was able to do the impossible. Now, it theorizes that nothing created life. And by accident. Ignoring all the complexities and the hurdles that this unintelligent nothingness would have had to overcome in order not only to create life, but also to sustain it. First this nothingness needed the proper conditions, with the proper chemicals or nutrients. All of which is not suppose to be, because there was after all nothing. Then the nothingness needed to have the proper spark to get everything going. Not to much mind you, but just right, so as not to burn off the chemicals or nutrients that somehow found each other out of all the other compounds that, if we allow the fact that the right compounds needed to have life then we should allow for the possibility that other compounds were present then also. Else why didn’t life come forth at the same time matter was created from nothing. And if the conditions were met in the beginning and only the compounds that were needed to have life were there in the beginning, then why isn’t this life being still created even today. If all these conditions were present before, and life was just barely to be, then the conditions today should be even better today. We should be able to detect this cataclysmic big bang happening even now. But, now listen, nope ” I got NOTHING”. And do you know why? Because Someone, not something made everything. “He Spoke and it was, He commanded, and it stood fast” All this obvious stop signs that should have been heeded by the Atheist, has been ignored, and it has cost Man so much in lost time and lost relationship. Because the Bible says “6 Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Isaiah55:6-7. You are wasting your time and sanity, believing that our first parent was an accident.
And unfortunately, you are losing the opportunity that God is extending to you to get to know Him and allow Him to bathe you in His love. Which will mean that you will lose out on His eternal life that He is offering you. Please Gary. By observation Science says that accidents do not create. Only destroys. Complexity, is by design. Not by accident. Observation tells us that, intelligence creates. You and I and everyone, and everything else, were created by God.

There is more. Please tell me why Your own Evolutionists are raising doubt about the theory of Evolution. Stating that the evidence found is not supporting Evolution. And that this evidence should not be used to defend Evolution. Tell me please why you hold fast to a sinking ship when your own fellow believers are telling you to jump ship?

There is both fossil evidence and genetic evidence that life evolved from a common ancestor. You’ve been told this before. Why do you insist on asking the same questions over and over when they have 1) already been answered, and 2) you refuse to research what is being told to you? If the material is difficult for you, there are plenty of people at this website who know the topic that can lend a hand explaining it. Continually ignoring facts and data just because they don’t jive with your religious dogma isn’t going to make those facts and data go away…

Right, and they didn’t live on a cliff, and they used ladders or rock steps. Ever been there? I have. There is no need to fly to something you can walk and climb to.

But let’s get to the whole flight evolution in humans nonsense that you propose. Can you fathom any reason, any reason at all, why it would have been a bad mutation for humans to start evolving wings? This is a serious question, and I’d like to see your answer. I want to see if you can look at this logically and determine why it might be bad for humans to go from arms and hands to wings. Please do your best.

Many Americans believe that the big-picture story of evolution, as biology professors routinely expound it, is false.1 Basically, they haven’t bought into the concept that all life descended from one common ancestor that miraculously sprang into being millions of years ago. And that makes sense, considering there are no real examples of that kind of evolution.

If evolutionary biologists could document such evolution in action, they could vindicate their worldview and cite real research to support their surreal claims. In 1980, this search for proof led researchers to painstakingly and purposefully mutate each core gene involved in fruit fly development. The now classic work, for which the authors won the Nobel Prize in 1995, was published in Nature.2 The experiments proved that the mutation of any of these core developmental genes―mutations that would be essential for the fruit fly to evolve into any other creature―merely resulted in dead or deformed fruit flies. This therefore showed that fruit flies could not evolve.

Similarly, Michigan State University evolutionary biologists Richard Lenski and his colleagues searched for signs of evolution in bacteria for 20 years, tracking 40,000 generations.3 In the end, the species that they started with was hobbled by accumulated mutations, and the only changes that had occurred were degenerative. University of Bristol emeritus professor of bacteriology Alan Linton summarized the situation:

But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.

Gerald, did you bother to look into anything that was claimed in that article? Anything at all? Did you just assume that what they claimed is accurate?

Because I did look into it. I always look into claims, whether they come from scientific journals or ICR’s website.

For example, I reviewed this claim made in the second paragraph: “The experiments proved that the mutation of any of these core developmental genes―mutations that would be essential for the fruit fly to evolve into any other creature―merely resulted in dead or deformed fruit flies. This therefore showed that fruit flies could not evolve.” They base their claim off of the research done in sourced item 2: “Nüsslein-Volhard, C. and E. Wieschaus. 1980. Mutations affecting segment number and polarity in Drosophila. Nature. 287 (5785): 795-801.”

Guess what I found out Gerald? If you read just the introductory synopsis of that paper, it clearly states: “In systematic searches for embryonic lethal mutants of Drosophila melanogaster we have identified 15 loci which when mutated alter the segmental pattern of the larva”. Please note the word “lethal”. Now why would that be in there, Gerald? If you read the paper, you come to find out that the researchers knew that the forced mutations were going to be lethal to the larvae that received them. So why were they putting lethal mutations into these larvae? Because, as the paper states: “The construction of complex form from similar repeating units is a basic feature of spatial organisation in all higher animals. Very little is known for any organism about the genes involved in this process. In Drosophila, the metameric nature of the pattern is most obvious in the thoracic and abdominal segments of the larval epidermis and we are attempting to identify all loci required for the establishment of this pattern. The identification of these genes and the description of their phenotypes should lead to a better understanding of the general mechanisms responsible for the formation of metameric patterns.” In other words Gerald, they wanted to know what part of the genome is responsible for repeating patterns, so they mutated parts of the genomes in various places, then witnessed which hatchlings had changes to the normal pattern found in the larvae, and thus could determine what genes play a role in patterns in higher animals.

Nowhere in that paper is their a statement, or even an inference, that these areas of the genome are “core areas” that are “necessary for evolution into any other creature” as ICR claims. In fact the Nature paper states that: “Drosophila has been estimated to have about 5,000 genes and only a very small fraction of these when mutated result in a change of the segmental pattern of the larva.” As evolution can occur when any part of a genome mutates, to claim that these areas are “core” and “necessary” for evolution is laughable claptrap. So the ICR claim that “This therefore showed that fruit flies could not evolve.” is a stunning lie that isn’t based on the data or general knowledge about genetics.

Why would a website defending your god creature need to LIE, Gerald? Why do they purposefully misrepresent a scientific research paper and LIE about the conclusions and results of the experiment? Why would they do that, Gerald? Can you answer that for me?

You’ve previously posted articles from creationist websites dealing with issues related to evolutionary theory which I’ve critiqued. You should recall that I demonstrated how Tompkins’ study was an example of poorly done science. I then showed you that the Neanderthal article was well out of date; it not only blatantly misrepresented others’ research but the assertions made have since been shown, after complete genome sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, to be completely wrong. But this article beats them all. It’s not even wrong. It’s ridiculous.

The first point to make is that although Brian Thomas has a degree in biology he hasn’t published any peer-reviewed original research in his life. He’s not a working scientist he writes articles for creationist magazines. The second point is that he’s also published articles on astrophysics, which he has no qualifications in…….so hardly an expert, is he? I’ll deal with the three main lines of research that he (somehow, incredibly) thinks support his creationist argument:

CLAIM 1: “In 1980, this search for proof led researchers to painstakingly and purposefully mutate each core gene involved in fruit fly development. The now classic work, for which the authors won the Nobel Prize in 1995, was published in Nature. The experiments proved that the mutation of any of these core developmental genes―mutations that would be essential for the fruit fly to evolve into any other creature―merely resulted in dead or deformed fruit flies. This therefore showed that fruit flies could not evolve.”
Thomas is citing this paper from 20+ years ago:

Tim has already commented on this paper. Before I start critiquing I want to say this: I know Tim has no qualifications in biology. He’s qualified in another field. But he respects the truth enough to take the time to look up the original paper. And he knows enough biology to realise when an author is being less than honest. So my question is why don’t you do that, Gerald? Instead of copy and paste why not do a little diligent research? Learn a little biology and critical analysis. What have you got to lose? Finding reality isn’t losing something. Now to it.

Thomas COMPLETELY MISREPRESENTS Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus’s work. His description of their research and what it was intended to do does not match. The work aimed to identify the genetic loci within a single species of fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster that, if mutated, would be lethal and cause embryonic development to fail. In other words, they were trying to isolate the genes necessary for embryonic development. They found 15 such loci in the 135 genes under study. In other words, they identified mutations at a very small number of specific loci that are lethal and mutations at other loci that were not. This is common to all species – if a lethal mutation (note: lethal, not necessarily any mutation at all) occurs at some crucial loci the embryo dies, if it doesn’t occur, the embryo continues to develop.

How he concludes that “This therefore showed that fruit flies could not evolve” is completely beyond me. Basically he’s saying that, if we identify a mutation within the genome of an embryo from a specific species that causes that embryo to be non-viable, then that species could not have evolved. This is beyond silly. In no way, shape or form can you conclude that from the findings reported. Furthermore, he compounds his stupidity by describing the loci identified as “mutations that would be essential for the fruit fly to evolve into any other creature.” What, a known lethal mutation is needed to drive evolution? He cannot be serious. Only mutations at specific loci pertinent to development can drive evolution? He would be in line for a Nobel. If specific mutations don’t occur then evolution doesn’t happen? Strewth, how on earth did this guy get a biology degree?

CLAIM 2: “Richard Lenski and his colleagues searched for signs of evolution in bacteria for 20 years, tracking 40,000 generations. In the end, the species that they started with was hobbled by accumulated mutations, and the only changes that had occurred were degenerative.”

This is an OUTRIGHT LIE. I’m sorry, there’s no other way to put it. Thomas is lying. Lenski’s research is very well known in biology. He even has a blog where he describes his research and the findings in less-scientific language. He’s even written about how creationists misunderstand and misreport his findings. How does Thomas think he can get away with such obvious dishonesty? Oh yeah, he’s relying on people not to research his assertions. He must be one arrogant dude. The paper he cites is:

“several lines of evidence indicate that almost all of these mutations were beneficial……..This same population later evolved an elevated mutation rate and accumulated hundreds of additional mutations dominated by a neutral signature………..In particular, beneficial substitutions were surprisingly uniform over time, whereas neutral substitutions were highly variable.”

The authors report that from 688,520 intermediate-frequency, high-quality SNPs they were able to identify several dozen genomic regions that show strong allele frequency differentiation [i.e., evidence of evolution]between a pooled sample of five replicate populations selected for accelerated development (they develop 20% faster) and pooled controls (normal rate of development). What they found was, in a nutshell, that sexually reproducing organisms show a different pattern of allele frequency change across generations [i.e., a different pattern of evolution] than asexually reproducing organisms like bacteria.

Now Thomas is being disingenuous in two ways. First he’s capitalising on the different pattern of evolution as being somehow a problem for evolutionary theory. It’s not, and I’ve no idea why he thinks it might be. Second, although he doesn’t actually say so he’s strongly inferring that this study is typical of work done with fruit fly. This is typical of a creationist ‘analysis’ – don’t compare the strengths and weaknesses of different studies, simply find a single study you can misrepresent enough to support your arguments and present it to a naïve audience as a typical example of the work done in that field. Look how he twists things to support his argument:

“Evolution was not observed in fruit fly genetic manipulations in 1980”

I’m not sure what he’s getting at here. It’s not true but then, as we’ve seen, lying is par for the course with him. Why he mentions 1980 is a mystery. He cites no paper from that year and doesn’t previously mention it anywhere in the text. Perhaps he meant 1990 but, oh dear, then he’d have found this well-known study:

Rice & Salt not only demonstrated speciation in Drosophilia fruit flies occurring within 35 generations but the type observed, sympatric speciation, is probably the rarest form of speciation. But these findings aren’t going to support his assertions so he’s just gone and ignored that study (and many others) and waffled about 1980. It’s the creationist way. Of course what do you expect from an opinion piece on a creationist website that makes no secret that they place more emphasis on “evidence of faithfulness to the grammatical-historical/normative interpretation of scripture” than sound scientific methodology? Thomas then goes on:

“They also suggested an alternative—that natural selection could be acting on already existing variations. But this is not evolution”

At this point I really can’t decide whether this guy himself is just plain ignorant of evolutionary theory or whether he’s so contemptuous of his readership that he thinks they’re as ignorant as he appears to be: Natural selection can most certainly act on already existing variations, this is a well- recognised mechanism in evolutionary theory.

You miss so much when you are not trying to reason. First off. The question, the main question, is and always has been, and this is because if the first question is not answered then it is mute to go one since you have no starting place to know form where to begin. So the first question, is how did life begin. Evolutionists from the beginning said that life started from a common ancestor. An amoeba, a one celled organism of some kind. Bacteria, or virus. And that all else grew to what is. Now. If the impossibility of an accident creating this Universe is incredulous, then to think that anything that created life as we know it now, could some how have done so, and even though that something is still viable today, then why isn’t it still creating life as we know it. You have fallen flat on your faces using a reason that Creationists are using to support their claims for the ID. but you give it another color and say that it is really the theory of Evolution. I tell you missed the obvious, What ever is being done in a petri dish, with what ever that is there it has and is and always will be what was placed in that petri dish. It doesn’t sprout wings to escape. It doesn’t turn into and elephant. It remains what God originally created it to be. With it’s original ability to adapt, written into its DNA so as to not have to need to wait millions and millions of years to evolve. It does it in it’s lifetime.

When discussing the scientific theory of evolution, that is not the first question. Why? Well, for the 900th time, because the theory of evolution does not deal with how life began. Investigation into how life began is a COMPLETELY SEPARATE line of work. How you can not possibly understand this by now?

The theory of evolution deals with the change in populations of living things over time. Whether that life came from another planet, or it started spontaneously, or some god created it, evolution is simply the study of how life has changed. How life began has NOTHING to do with the theory of evolution. It does not change the theory, or affect the theory. Life started from a common ancestor long ago, and billions of facts and data points support this conclusion. Separate independent fields of study support this conclusion. Even if some god creature wished the first life form into being, evolution is STILL a fact. It happened, regardless of how life began. Can you possibly get this through your skull?

[Evolutionists from the beginning said that life started from a common ancestor. An amoeba, a one celled organism of some kind. Bacteria, or virus. And that all else grew to what is.]

Based on all the facts and data, that’s exactly what happened.

[Now. If the impossibility of an accident creating this Universe is incredulous,]

How is a universe happening an “impossibility”? You know quantum mechanics and physics that well to be able to state that, eh? Please tell us how it is impossible, in your own words. I’ve already explained to you before that the universe is a net sum of zero, and why it doesn’t need to be “created”. But let’s your conclusive proof of what you state above…

By the way, you’ve just created the logical paradox by stating that the universe happening naturally is impossible, which means that something even more complex…like say a god that could create it…is also impossible. I’ve explained this before too, not that you remember or learned from it obviously.

[then to think that anything that created life as we know it now, could some how have done so, and even though that something is still viable today, then why isn’t it still creating life as we know it.]

Maybe it is for all we know. Problem though is that any new simple proto-life that forms is going to get eaten. If it is made up of animo acids and simple ligases than it is organic, and digestible, by pretty much every single life form on Earth. It wouldn’t stand a chance to do much of anything before becoming breakfast for an already existing life form. Add to that the fact that we don’t know exactly what the process was, and therefore cannot comment on exactly how often we’d expect new life to come together, and thus we can’t answer that question with any degree of certainty.

[You have fallen flat on your faces using a reason that Creationists are using to support their claims for the ID. but you give it another color and say that it is really the theory of Evolution.]

Except that the start of life has nothing to do with Evolution. But keep making the same imbecilic mistakes over and over Gerald. It’s part of your charm I suppose…

[I tell you missed the obvious, What ever is being done in a petri dish, with what ever that is there it has and is and always will be what was placed in that petri dish. It doesn’t sprout wings to escape. It doesn’t turn into and elephant. It remains what God originally created it to be. With it’s original ability to adapt, written into its DNA so as to not have to need to wait millions and millions of years to evolve. It does it in it’s lifetime.]

Billions of facts disagree with you. The facts disagreed with you last year when you made such claims, and they still disagree with you today. Life evolved. Sorry it doesn’t fit your Bronze Age tale, but that’s your problem.

You’ve never given us any requested empirical data for god creatures or the supernatural, so trying to credit such a creature with making life forms is irrational and absurd when you can’t even prove that creature exists. It’s putting the cart before the horse.

Life forms do not evolve in one generation. Those changes cannot be passed down to the next generation, Gerald, because only changes to the DNA of a fertility cell (sperm or ovum) can be passed along. And since the DNA of those are set at birth, it doesn’t matter if you start sprouting wings when you are twenty, or grow an extra eye at thirty. Unless that mutation is carried in a sperm or ovum, it dies with you. This, like everything else, has already been explained to you in great detail previously.

Gary, I appreciate your attitude. I know that you and a lot of other Evolutionists, Christian based or otherwise, mean well. But, I know that I don’t have a degree in, Physics, biology, quantum mechanics or any other letter behind my name. I’m just an ordinary guy with, an an average, sometimes more than that, IQ. Something else that I don’t have is the time to go through on my own, all the ins and outs, and wheretoos and wherefores. I have what I have and I’ve learned to depend on that. I’ve built up a rather impressive list of friends who, have some of those letters behind their names, and friends who have under and behind them years and years of making good choices. My father, and mother, although neither highly, religious, I knew they believed in God. Their concept may not have been the same as mine, but they believed. You know and I know that in the millions of Christians that are out there many of them have the IQ’s that rival that of Einstein. Who in fact believed.
Here’s the thing. Whereas in this world, peace is maintained by compromise, for a Christian, surrender is the operative word. You give up yourself to God. Not, a close your eyes and just jump, kind of surrender, but accepting that when all else doesn’t make sense, you trust in Him. You believe that He is the One that can be trusted.
That said. You and every other Atheist, if you are an Atheist, I’m not sure, but for me to doubt the Bible and the Creation story, puts you at odds with God, because we believe that God inspired His written word. He made sure that the books chosen to be placed in the Book the Bible were the ones that are there. He insured the safety of these books from the time they were written, all through the findings of them and to the translations of each one and placing of each book into the hands of everyone desiring to know truth. Whereas we can banter as to who we might marry, or the choice of kind of service in our lives, that is up to us. But to compromise and try to pick and choose just what is or isn’t inspired in God’s Holy Word, can not be allowed. Because when we do this, it brings into question all the other things that are supposed to be inspired. Then what is a Christian to do. This world would have Christianity, blend in with it. But God said that a Christian is a lamp on a hill top. This world would have us be silent, and go along with the flow, but God calls us to cry aloud and spare not. Science has been often wrong down through history. Men like Galileo, Pasteur and the likes who, stood up and said that there fellow peers had it wrong. And many times Science caught up. But many times it was after others paid a high price for the errors that Scientist had made.
As I said, although I don’t have PHD’s behind my name, I’m not a bumbling lunatic. And neither are almost any Christian that has lived or is living today. Sure we give up our lives to spread Christianity. Some may do it for the wrong reasons. And in the wrong way. But we all believe. For those who are tossed to and fro by the winds of Scientific jargon, I won’t condemn. They will when it comes time jump ship or repent of their choices. We all grow. Some just grow more slowly, and God knows this and has made concessions for us all. But when Science goes contrary to the Bible, it is the Bible on which we should place our trust. Not what man says, for man is human, and to err is human. Man is fickle. God stands firm. And there is too much error that has been pointed out in the theory of Evolution, that has made me and other Christians believe that it is upon God’s word on which we should stand.
Devout Evolutionists themselves have declared that their peers who have made conclusions that Evolution has been proven, are wrong. Who are we supposed to side with. What our eyes tells, ( and by that I mean that no one has observed any kind of evolutionary work in progress, other than what the speciation adaptation myth that the new evolutionist has fallen back on, because of the fact that the original thought of Evolution has actually been let out to pasture) And it is illogical to assume that a single, simple, mindless, whatever, with a brain as smooth as a babies bottom, at least it would be if it had a brain. But in all essence, it being the first of its kind just now being wowed by becoming, didn’t even have a chance to formulate an innate way to act, let alone know of its own needs or likes or dislikes. If there wasn’t any form of intelligence guiding it, as the intelligence in the lab with the fruit flies, creating it, as it was in the lab with the fruit flies, then how could it possible have ever been possible. You and the other Evolutionists fail to meet this questionable road block, or cavern the size of the grand canyon, with any kind of logical explanation, other than, it happened by accident. You all fall upon this quip as though it is suppose to just cause us to stammer and glibly accept defeat.
But it ain’t going to happen.

Gerald writes: [He insured the safety of these books from the time they were written, all through the findings of them and to the translations of each one and placing of each book into the hands of everyone desiring to know truth.]

Ah, so the god creature itself is the one that made all those contradictions. Fascinating that an all powerful, all knowing being could be so sloppy…

The very first claim in that ICR propoganda piece – that evolution has no one has never seen it happen – is a blatant lie. It’s been seen by millions. It’s called the fossil record. You should get acquainted with it sometime.

You’ve even had this explained to you in the past. Why didn’t you notice this false claim of theirs? I’m guessing that, given your time between posts in this thread, you didn’t actually read it. You found an article at ICR, you cut and pasted it in here, and you hit the “POST” button.

If you aren’t willing to read and comprehend the very stuff you are posting to support your claims, and you won’t expand your knowledge base to include anything written in any scientific literature on Earth, and you continue to ask the same old tired questions that have been answered by people time and again on this website, then what exactly is the point of you being here, Gerald? Perhaps I didn’t understand the level of indoctrination you’ve been through and how little you actually want to exchange ideas and have informed discussions. That’s a pity for you, I must say.

There is no proof. Anything that you have been told by your professors that has been said was proof, has been denied by other honest evolutionists who testified that the evidence actually supports the Intelligent Design theory. That along with the fact that those dishonest Evolutionists have made up evidence trying to make support for their theories, along with what should be so obviously understood, which is a simple one celled organism could never be able to have all that it would need to become a complex organism. The same simple organisms that are around today were around in the beginning, and none are morphing into any kind of a complex organism. If they were doing the “morphing shuffle” back then they should still be doing it even today. But what is being observed from the beginning of time, is that each species, each organism, be it simple or complex, produces only its own kind. There has never been any observation of one species producing anything else but the parent was. There is more evidence in favor of UFO’s, then there is for Evolution.

My personal acceptance that the theory of evolution is a sound scientific body of work is not just because someone said so. I have actively pursued the reading and studying of information on the topic for years. As a youth I collected fossils from the limestone and shale rocks around my Missouri home. To cover all the bases, I have read just about everything there is on the topic at websites like ICR, and other creationist sites. I do this not only because the topic has interest for me, but because I am a skeptical person who likes to verify and validate things for myself. To date I can find no empirical data that contradicts the scientific theory of evolution. I can also find no evidence that supports ID claims.

You have a rather stubborn habit of dismissing evidence out of hand without even taking a look at it. You don’t read research papers or go speak to anyone about the topic. You sit here and try to claim (incorrectly) that I am going off what I’ve been told, and then turn around and use just one website – ICR – and believe everything that they write without skepticism. Your confirmation bias is astounding.

If you don’t think fossils show the change in life forms over time, then explain where they come from, including the enormous time difference in age between so many of them. If each creature is made via intelligent design, then why do so many creatures that existed before modern ones become more and more similar the closer in time they lived to today?

All that I have ever been told by you and all the other, unscientific theorists, is that Evolution is factual beyond question. But you do not give credible evidence to support your claims. You mention studies performed by others, studies of which you and the others have never gone and substantiated on your own. What I have done, and I’ve done this in spite of the fact that I am to much of an intelligent being to believe that malarky that you have swallowed. I know that it is impossible for one celled mindless organisms to ever have produced anything more than what they were and still are today. I can not believe that you all could not at least ask the one question that would settle this question for all time. And that is, if one celled organisms gave rise to all other complex organisms back then, then why is it not happening today? The organisms are still the same (still the same) “hint, hint” the environment is better than it was, if not at least the same that allowed those organisms to morph back then. So why aren’t those industrious busy bodies, still fabricating other new species today. That would certainly shut my mouth, and that of other God fearing complex organisms such as I. And you all would be able to gloat and gloat and say ” I told you so” to the top of your lungs.
Please at least give me, give us, some kind of plausible answer to this mind numbing, or at least finger numbing, question that to me should be an obviously valid question that needs to be answered in order to stifle the critics of Evolution, and therefore Atheism.
Come on. I’ve asked this question more than once, and stated it in different ways. I’m sure you should be able to understand my question. You have been able to sift through the rigor moro of lies that Evolutionists have fabricated to shore up the impossible suppositions of the theory of Evolution. If you can understand it why can’t you understand my question. Or maybe you don’t think my question is valid. You think it has no bearing upon such an important theme. Or maybe you are hoping no one will notice my question and hope that they won’t ask themselves the same question. Knowing that it is a very good question. One that should lead us to the true way that Science works. And that is by observation. And since it has been observed over and over again that all species have only produce their same kind, and these observations have been recorded ever since man has been recording data, that the theory of Evolution needs to be tossed on the dung heap and burned for fodder, to make light for the real truth, which is that God is alive and kicking but.

THE FOSSIL RECORD Does Not Support Evolution But Is Positive Evidence For
Creation!

The Only Direct Evidence

CARL DUNBAR , Yale Univ. “Although the comparative study of living animals and
plants may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only
historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more
complex forms.” , p. 47

S. M. STANLEY , Johns Hopkins Univ., “It is doubtful whether, in the absence of
fossils, the idea of evolution would represent anything more than an outrageous
hypothesis….The fossil record and only the fossil record provides direct evidence of
major sequential changes in the Earth’s biota.”, 1981, p.72

STEPHEN GOULD , Harvard, “…one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of
you may not be aware of; that since the so called Cambrian explosion…during which
essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first
appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil
record.”, Speech at SMU, Oct.2, 1990

PRESTON CLOUD & MARTIN F. GLAESSNER , “Ever since Darwin, the geologically
abrupt appearance and rapid diversification of early animal life have fascinated
biologist and students of Earth history alike….This interval, plus Early Cambrian, was
the time during which metazoan life diversified into nearly all of the major phyla and
most of the invertebrate classes and orders subsequently known.” , Aug.27,
1982

RICHARD MONASTERSKY , Earth Science Ed., Science News, “The remarkably
complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared….This moment, right at the
start of the Earth’s Cambrian Period…marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the
seas with the earth’s first complex creatures….’This is Genesis material,’ gushed one
researcher….demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in
the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today…a
menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertebrates that
would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver.” , p.40, 4/93

RICHARD DAWKINS , Cambridge, “And we find many of them already in an
advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were
just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance
of sudden planting has delighted creationists….the only alternative explanation of the
sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine
creation…”, , 1986, p229-230

H.S. LADD, UCLA , “Most paleontologists today give little thought to fossiliferous
rocks older than the Cambrian, thus ignoring the most important missing link of all.
Indeed the missing PreCambrian record cannot properly he described as a link for it is
in reality, about ninetenths of the chain of life: the first ninetenths.”, . 1967, Vol.II, p.7

PERCY E. RAYMOND , Prof. of Paleontology, Harvard, “It is evidence that the oldest
Cambrian fauna is diversified and not so simple, perhaps, as the evolutionists would
hope to find it. Instead of being composed chiefly of protozoa’s, it contains no
representatives of that phylum but numerous members of seven higher groups are
present, a fact which shows that the greater part of the major differentiation of animals
had already taken place in those ancient times.”, , 1967 p.23

JOHN E. REPETSKI , U.S. Geological Survey, “The oldest land plants now known are
from the Early Cambrian… Approximately 60 Cambrian sporegenera are now on record
….represent 6 different groups of vascular plants…”, , Vol. 13, June ’59,
p.264-275

SEPARATE FOSSIL KINDS , Valentine (U. CA) & Erwin (MI St.), “If we were to expect
to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be the rocks of the
late Precambrian to Ordovician times, when the bulk of the world’s higher animal taxa
evolved. Yet traditional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or
classes appearing then.”, , p.84, 1987.

“TREES” NOT FROM FOSSILS , S. J. GOULD, Harvard, “The evolutionary trees that
adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is
inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of the fossils.”, ., V.86, p.13

STORY TIME , COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat.
History, “You say I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type or
organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one
could make a watertight argument.” “It is easy enough to make up stories of how one
form gave rise to another. … But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way
of putting them to the test. … I don’t think we shall ever have any access to any form of
tree which we can call factual.”, Feb. 1984, p.56

ARBITRARY ARRANGEMENT , R.H. DOTT, U. of Wis. & R.L. BATTEN, Columbia
U., A.M.N.H., “We have arranged the groups in a traditional way with the ‘simplest’
forms first, and progressively more complex groups following. This particular
arrangement is arbitrary and depends on what definition of ‘complexity’ you wish to
choose. …things are alike because they are related, and the less they look alike, the
further removed they are from their common ancestor.” , p.602

UNRELATED LOOKALIKES , J.Z. YOUNG, Prof. of Anatomy, Oxford, “….similar
features repeatedly appear in distinct lines. …Parallel evolution is so common that it is
almost a rule that detailed study of any group produces a confused taxonomy.
Investigators are unable to distinguish populations that are parallel new developments
from those truly descended from each other.” , p.779

INTERPRETATION OF SIMILARITY , T.H. MORGAN Prof. Zoology, Columbia,
Univ., “If, then, it can be established beyond dispute that similarity or even identity of
the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted to mean that both
have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy
seems to tumble in ruins.”, 16;3;237, p.216

NONGENETIC SIMILARITY , SIR GAVIN DEBEER, Prof. Embry., U. London,
Director BMNH, “It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the
inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology
was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to identity of genes. The
attempt to find homologous genes has been given up as hopeless.” Oxford Biology
Reader, p.16,

EMBRYONIC RECAPITULATION? , Ashley Montagu, “The theory of recapitulation
was destroyed in 1921 by Professor Walter Garstang in a famous paper. Since then no
respectable biologist has ever used the theory of recapitulation, because it was utterly
unsound, created by a Nazi-like preacher named Haeckel.”,

BOTHERSOM DISTRESS , STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, Lecture at Hobart &
William Smith College, 14/2/1980. “Every paleontologist knows that most species don’t
change. That’s bothersome….brings terrible distress. …They may get a little bigger or
bumpier but they remain the same species and that’s not due to imperfection and gaps
but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they
don’t change, its not evolution so you don’t talk about it.”

DESIGNS , S.J. GOULD, Harvard, “We can tell tales of improvement for some groups,
but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of
multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating
excellence….I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the
most puzzling fact of the fossil record….we have sought to impose a pattern that we
hoped to find on a world that does not really display it.”, ., 2/82, p.22

DARWIN’S BIGGEST PROBLEM , “….innumerable transitional forms must have
existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of
the earth? ….why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated
organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my
theory”. .

MORE EMBARRASSING , DAVID M. RAUP, Univ. Chicago; Chicago Field Mus. of
N.H., “The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with
darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of
this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn’t look the way he
predicted it would…. Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the
knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a
million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. …ironically, we have even
fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean
that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the
evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the
result of more detailed information.” ., Vol.50, p.35

GOOD RECORD-BAD PREDICTION , NILES ELIDRIDGE, Columbia Univ.,
American Museum of Nat. Hist., “He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of
paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search. … One hundred and twenty
years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil
record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a
miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.”
, p.45-46

COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist British Museum
of Natural History, , p. 60, 1984. “There have been an awful lot of stories,
some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really
is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse
evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth
in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the
people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative
nature of some of that stuff.”

STORY TIME OVER , DEREK AGER, Univ. at Swansea, Wales, “It must be significant
that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student…have now been
‘debunked.’ Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for
evolutionary lineage’s among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally
elusive.”,., Vol.87, p.132

, , Vol. 322,
1986 p.677, “Fossil remains claimed to be of two crowsized birds 75 million years older
than Archaeopteryx have been found. …a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who
found the fossils, says they have advanced avian features. …tends to confirm what
many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line
to modern birds.”

REPTILE TO BIRD W.E. SWINTON, “The origin of birds is largely a matter of
deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable
change from reptile to bird was achieved.” Vol. 1, p.1.

ORDERS, CLASSES, & PHYLA , GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON, Harvard, “Gaps
among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders,
classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always large.”, ,
p. 149

GENUINE KNOWLEDGE , D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma, “Despite the bright
promise that paleontology provides a means of “seeing” evolution, it has presented
some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of
‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and
paleontology does not provide them… The ‘fact that discontinuities are almost always
and present at the origin of really big categories’ is an item of
genuinely historical knowledge.”,, Vol. 28, p. 467

NOT ONE ! D.S. WOODROFF, Univ. of CA, San Diego, “But fossil species remain
unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single
example of a significant transition.”, Vol.208, 1980, p.716

gradual adaptive change], all the while
knowing that it does not.”, , 1986, p.144

“UNEMBARRASSED” , GOULD & ELDREDGE, “In fact, most published commentary
on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several
paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had
previously been simply embarrassing; ‘all these years of work and I haven t found any
evolution’. (R.A. REYMENT Quoted) “The occurrences of long sequences within species
are common in boreholes and it is possible to exploit the statistical properties of such
sequences in detailed biostratigraphy. It is noteworthy that gradual, directed
transitions from one species to another do not seem to exist in borehole samples of
microorganisms.” (H.J. MACGILLAVRY Quoted) “During my work as an oil
paleontologist I had the opportunity to study sections m

“When discussing the scientific theory of evolution, that is not the first question. Why? Well, for the 900th time, because the theory of evolution does not deal with how life began. Investigation into how life began is a COMPLETELY SEPARATE line of work. How you can not possibly understand this by now?”
But an Evolutionist would tell you differently, that is, if his theory was right. But since his and your theories are pathetically incorrect, we need not worry about either. But just so that you can know you are wrong and to allow you to have the opportunity to realize that you can make wrong assumptions and therefore you are not prone to choose who you can and not believe, and therefore you make mistakes by not being able to reasonably choose the right interpretations of evidence provide, then you should seek more guidance to help you know what is correct. The post is from Greg Laden found on the “http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/06/28/is-the-origin-of-life-differen/’
“I heard it said recently that “Evolution” and “Origin of life” are two separate issues. I know that this is a falsehood, and I’ll discuss in a moment how and why it is not true. But first, I checked around with a few people that I know and love, and found out that some of them assumed this was true. I think it is something that has been said enough times that if you are not personally engaged in the research or just don’t think about it enough, you can easily assume that this is what the experts say. But they don’t.

It is possible that there is a nefarious force working here. And I’m talking about the “A-word.” If the evolution of species is one thing, and the origin off life is another thing, then we could, potentially, focus on evolution in, say, high school biology classes, and just ignore the whole origin of life bit. Let people think that god started life and perhaps set up a few (Darwinian) rules (theistic evolution). Etc.

But that is not actually how it works, and the best way to think about this is to ask the following question: “Just what do you think evolution is?”

Possible answers would be “Evolution is natural selection,” or “Evolution is the diversification of species,” or “Evolution is change organic change over time” and so on. These are all correct, of course. But if evolution is any two or more of these things, then it is not one of these things, exclusively. And, if evolution is both diversification and natural selection, then it is a concept that includes some very very different things. So, if you think “Origin of Life” is not evolution because it is somehow different from any one specific aspect of evolution (like natural selection) then you are being unfair to Origin of Life by treating its different-ness as an excuse for excluding it. Shame on you.

It seems that one argument is that the Origin of Life is not evolution because evolution is natural selection, diversification of species, and so on, and none of those things could have happened without life already existing, and it does not really exist at the moment of origin. This, however, is not correct for two reasons. The first (and probably most important) reason is that we don’t know what the origin if life was like. So, to characterize it as an instant when some stuff goes from being not-life to being life is fantasy. You don’t know that this is how it happened, so you can’t use this made-up trait of the origin of life to say that it is not evolution. The second reason is a bit more tenuous; Most models for the origin of life are very Darwinian. Most have some selection going on, most have some diversification going on, and all, by necessity and definition, have change over time going on. And, it is organic change, because the stuff of life before the primordial animation was organic stuff.

The origin of life is part of evolutionary biology.
I will return to give you more evidence of your ignorance later.

Gerald writes: [But an Evolutionist would tell you differently, that is, if his theory was right. But since his and your theories are pathetically incorrect, we need not worry about either]

How does science define the scientific theory of evolution? From Livescience.com:

“The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits.”

Also from Livescience.com: “The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “All life on Earth is connected and related to each other,” and this diversity of life is a product of “modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in an environment over others,”

From britannica.com: “Evolution, theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.”

From Wikipedia.com: “Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations”

From Biologos.org: “Evolution does not attempt to give a scientific explanation for the origin of life, but only for the development and diversification of lifeforms after the first life began.”

Also from Biologos.org: “The theory of evolution states that all the lifeforms on earth share a common ancestor as a result of variation and selection over a very long time (currently thought to be around 4 billion years). Variation means that offspring are not exact replicas of their parents, and selection occurs when only some of those offspring go on to produce more of their own offspring. Common ancestry does not mean the species we find today have evolved from each other—dogs did not evolve from cats, and humans did not evolve from chimpanzees. Instead, if you go back far enough in the ancestral tree of any two organisms, common ancestry predicts that you’ll come to a “grandparent” of which both current organisms are descendants.”

From reference.com: “The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin entails the evolution by natural selection of all life on earth. It states that new generations are born with different inheritable traits, and that the traits that are superior for survival will be passed on to new generations. This means that given enough time, an organism can change and evolve to create a new species.”

From thefreedictionary.com: “Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, often resulting in the development of new species. The mechanisms of evolution include natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, mutation, migration, and genetic drift.”

From scientificamerican.com: “Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.”

For the 901st time, the origin of life is not, I repeat not, part of the scientific theory of evolution. I don’t care what your creationist masters tell you, and I don’t care that you don’t like it, evolution and the origin of life are two separate topics.

[The post is from Greg Laden]

I read it. He’s wrong. The article is rather silly. The definition of the scientific theory of life is an explanation for the change in populations of living things over time. For the theory to work, you have to have living things. That’s a very simple pre-qualification, and also very true. So trying to cram abiogenesis into the theory of evolution doesn’t make one iota of sense, because how life began is not the study of living things.

Call it oversimplified if you want, but I think it’s pretty obvious why the two topics are separate, regardless of what one dude writes in one blog…

And for the umpteenth time what the Evolutionists of today are trying to morph the idea of what Evolution, is not what the Evolutionists of yesterday were saying. The only thing the arguments that they were giving then, was lacking the evidence needed to support their claims. So the Evolutionist of today are taking one of the most obvious factors that used to show that organisms are able to adapt to their surroundings and are using it to claim that it supports Evolution. The only thing the Evolutionists are not realizing, which is probably due to their lack of being to able to reason, because they are too busy trying to keep from being embarrassed, and that is all and each organism that is produced from its predecessor, always resembles its predecessor. They remain that same specie. ALWAYS.
Another thing that shows that the Evolutionist is scrambling to save safe is, they will ignore questions that arise from the wrong assumptions that would show that that assumption is made in error. Questions like for Evolution, Just how is an organism suppose to be able to wait the billions of years to evolve, when it first comes to life, and that organism is not aware, is not programmed, and it isn’t able to do or procure what it needs to survive. If it had to evolve it would have been snuffed out as soon as it came to life.

Gerald writes: [And for the umpteenth time what the Evolutionists of today are trying to morph the idea of what Evolution, is not what the Evolutionists of yesterday were saying.]

Darwin and others in his day said that populations of animals change over time because certain traits that show up improve the chances of survival and therefore the chances of producing offspring. As Wikipedia states: “Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.” How is that different than today? It isn’t.

At open.ac.uk is states: “Unlike today’s scientists with their sophisticated lab techniques and computer equipment, Darwin was heavily reliant on observation and deduction; yet one of the amazing things about Darwin’s theory is that it has remained at the heart of scientific thinking about the origins and development of life. Through our understanding of DNA we now have a much more sophisticated view of genetically inherited traits, which provides an even stronger scientific basis for Darwin’s 150 year old theory.”

And since it is supported by billions of facts and data points, by multiple independent fields of research, tested time and again, the scientific theory is well supported and validated. I’d apologize for it not jiving with your fairy tale world view of things, but there’s no reason to apologize for accuracy…

[The only thing the Evolutionists are not realizing, which is probably due to their lack of being to able to reason, because they are too busy trying to keep from being embarrassed, and that is all and each organism that is produced from its predecessor, always resembles its predecessor. They remain that same specie. ALWAYS.]

Yes, each generation is the same species as it’s parents. Is it the same species as it’s ancestors from 50 million years ago? Usually not. You are talking about 1 generation when speciation takes much longer than that. Thanks for allowing me the chance to explain that to you again for the 486th time…

[Questions like for Evolution, Just how is an organism suppose to be able to wait the billions of years to evolve, when it first comes to life, and that organism is not aware, is not programmed, and it isn’t able to do or procure what it needs to survive. If it had to evolve it would have been snuffed out as soon as it came to life.]

What organism has waited billions of years to evolve, Gerald? While you google that, I will explain to you again for the 345th time that the theory of evolution does not state that anything “had to evolve”. It states that populations of animals do evolve over time. The amount of change is not limited in scope or size. Alligators have changed very little. Owls have changed a lot. They both evolved from earlier species. I look forward to you ignoring this fact in the future and needing it explained to you again as if you were a child learning their alphabet…

No animal has evolved. Even your beloved states that out of all the fossils that has been unearthed “Richard Dawkins, Cambridge, “And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. …the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation…”, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p229-230.” this is from the “bible.ca” site.
Notice the date of the lecture 1986.

“STORY TIME, Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat. History, “I will lay it on the line–there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” “It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another…. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. …. I don’t think we shall ever have any access to any form of tree which we can call factual.” Harper’s, Feb.1984, p.56.
Notice the date 1984

“New York Times, 4/8,/2001, “Several years ago, though, biologists discovered that many of the drawings were fraudulent… One of the texts that includes the faulty drawings is the third edition of “Molecular Biology of the Cell,” the bedrock text of the field. Its authors include Dr. Bruce Alberts, a biochemist who is president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Dr. James D. Watson, the geneticist who shared a Nobel Prize for unraveling the structure of DNA”
Notice the date 2001

“PREDICTION FAILED, Niles Eldridge, American Museum Of Natural History “He prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search. …it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.” The Myths of Human Evolution, p.45-46″

“”BIRD-BRAINED” “Researchers at the U. of Texas, Austin have used a computerized x-ray technique to build a three dimensional picture of the inside of the skull and inner ear of a fossil archaeopteryx. From this they deduced Archaeopteryx had a brain and inner ear very similar to living birds…well suited for flight.” Science Now, 8/4/2004″
Notice the date 2004

“FOSSIL BIRD EARLIER, “Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found….a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils, says they have advanced avian features. …tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds.” Nature, Vol.322, 1986 p.677.”

“BIRDS FROM DINOSAURS? Douglas Futuyama, University Of NC “Yale University released…a landmark publication… ‘the impetus for the book was the fact that this dinosaurian origin of birds had become, overnight, the dogma in the field, and many of us from the ornithological side felt that was simply wrong …that birds descended from dinosaurs is utter nonsense.” Chronicle Of Higher Education, 10/25/96.”

“Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins U., “In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.” The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p.95. David W. Swift, University Of Hawaii, “…no phylum can be traced from a preceding one in the fossil record, in fact we cannot account for the origin of a single phylum: they all appear abruptly. This is also true of lower taxonomic groups such as classes and orders, and possibly lower still.” Evolution Under The Microscope, 2002, p.295″
How much more evidence do you need that an Intelligence created all without evolution

Gerald, do you know what a quote mine is? It’s when someone takes words out on context in such a way as to misrepresent or even outright change the meaning those words had in their original source. This is a favorite ploy of your creationist masters, and is common at creationist websites. Did you bother to check on these quotes to see if they were accurate? No, of course you didn’t, because you have no real interest in being skeptical or pessimistic and would rather accept whatever malarkey is thrown your way as long as it agrees with your fairy tale.

Let’s examine the first quote you post. It appears Dawkins is saying that life forms just appear in the fossil record, and it can’t be explained, so creationism is the only other explanation. That, however, is not what he said. Here is a copy of the full text from pages 229-230. Please read it all:

Before we come to the sort of sudden bursts that they had in mind, there are some conceivable meanings of ‘sudden bursts’ that they most definitely did not have in.mind. These must be cleared out of the way because they have been the subject of serious misunderstandings. Eldredge and Gould certainly would agree that some very important gaps really are due to imperfections in the fossil record. Very big gaps,
too. For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to
say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. One good reason might be that
many of these animals had only soft parts to their bodies: no shells or bones to fossilize. If you are a creationist you may think that this is special pleading. My point here is that, when we are talking about gaps of this magnitude, there is no difference whatever in the interpretations of ‘punctuationists’ and ‘gradualists’. Both schools of thought despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. Both schools of thought agree that the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation, and both would reject this alternative.”

As is plainly evident, the “quote” presented at your creationist website does not represent the statements that Dawkins was making in his book. It begs the same question I asked in this thread in January that you never answered – Why do your creationist masters have to create lies and fabrications to prop up their claims? Why do they need to lie to you, Gerald?

Your next quote mine is from Stephen J Gould. Here is the complete paragraph, and the next one. Please read it in it’s entirety:

“Thus we may dismiss the “seen one worm, seen ’em all” argument as simply wrong; but a more sophisticated version of “should we be surprised” does have potential
merit. Consider any genealogical system that ends up with a few well-dif’erentiated survivors, all rather distant one from the other. Modem life surely displays this cardinal feature. Our modem phyla represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla). In order to reach a dif- ferentiated state of such distance between survivors, a distant past must have in- cluded a vast number of linking forms, now extinct. These links would not resemble
fanciful hybrids between living organisms (a cat-dog or a cow-horse) because modem lineages have been separate for so long. They would, instead, be odd animals
with veiled hints of several lineages to come and many unique features of their own (as we actually find in mammals like Hyracotherium, the 50-million-year-old ancestor of both horses and rhinoceroses). Consider a figure and a nonbiological analogy (with thanks to R. T. Simmonds of Nordland, Washington, who wrote to me about this example in another context just last week). The modem Romance languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian—all derive from Latin and represent clearly separate entities, despite evident similarities. But if we could—as we cannot—trace all the lineages leading from Latin, we would find a forest of village dialects linking all these end points together. Many would be odd and unique, others smoothly transitional.
We would learn that our modern descendants are just a small sample of the total richness, most now lost. We do get some hint of the full tree in the survival of a few “minor phyla” (Catalan and Romansh, for example), and in historical records of a few extinct lineages (Provencal and Burgundian). But if we could go back to the beginnings of the spread, Simmonds conjectures, we would probably encounter a veritable Cambrian explosion of lost variants.
In this sense, a phenomenon like the Cambrian explosion must generate a majority
of lineages that will seem peculiar in comparison with modem survivors—for these form the web of intermediary links that must die out if we are to emerge (as we have) with a limited set of widely separated designs.”

Once again we see that the implied meaning of your creationist masters does not represent what the original author intended. Why must they lie to you, Gerald, to make their point? If evolution is so horrible a theory, and on the verge of collapse, why do they have to cherry pick certain sentences out of pages and pages of material and omit the rest when they post this crap on their pseudo-science websites? There should be hundreds, if not thousands, of articles that they could post IN THEIR ENTIRETY that destroy the theory of evolution. Instead, all we get is a few sentences taken out of context. Why the deceit by “christian” websites, Gerald?

Instead of going through all the quote mines you posted, which I don’t have the time for, let’s just skip to your last sentence: “How much more evidence do you need that an Intelligence created all without evolution.” How much more? How about ANY evidence? You’ve been asked for evidence for a creator, and god creatures, and the supernatural. You have completely failed in this regard. You have been asked for evidence that living things were actually created by this unproven creator. You have completely failed to provide any empirical evidence or data for that. All I get out of you is a few blatantly edited misquotes, and even those don’t contain anything more than opinion. No facts, no data, no evidence. You’ve been asked to give an alternate explanation for fossils tens of millions of years old, and where over 2 billion fossils came from if everything was supposedly “created”. You have totally failed in this regard as well. And don’t forget that myself and others have actually taken the time to specifically explain to you what empirical data and evidence is, and why empirical matters as it relates to proving anything. The sum total of that time and effort on you is that we get quote mines….

You have nothing original or new to add to any of these discussions, you continue making the same banal mistakes, you quote material from websites that have been debunked countless times over the years, and you can’t answer any of the detailed questions posed to you. It’s obvious you are nothing more than a dishonest proselytizing puppet.

You are kidding. The quote that has been floating around from Mr. Dawkins, has been doing so for quite a while. He has not chosen to cry fowl. He has not demanded a retraction. Probably because it is not used out of context. And if you were not so blinded by whatever is preventing you from seeing the truth. Just look at the quote given by Dawkins. There are no spaces between words. There are no …’s that could lead someone to misunderstand the context. “Richard Dawkins, Cambridge, “And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. …the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation…”, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p229-230.”
Don’t you see what is so obvious. Look at the truth.
But not only can we tell what he is trying to say because the whole sentence is written word for word, but he is saying the same thing the other honorable Evolutionists are saying.
“Richard Monastersky, Earth Science Ed., Science News, “The remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared. …This moment, right at the start of the Earth’s Cambrian Period…marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the earth’s first complex creatures….’This is Genesis material,’ gushed one researcher. …demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today…a menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertevrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver.” Discover, p.40, 4/93.”
“DISTINCT LIVING KINDS” Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, “Our modern phyla represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla).” Natural History, p.15, Oct. 1990″
“DISTINCT FOSSIL KINDS, …demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today…a menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertevrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver.” Discover, p.40, 4/93.”
“BLIND FAITH, Douglas Futuyma, “It is considered likely that all the animal phyla became distinct before or during the Cambrian, for they all appear fully formed, without intermediates connecting one form to another.” Evolutionary Biology, 1985, p.325″
“FOSSILS INDICATE CREATION! E.J.H. Cornor, Cambridge “Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.” Contemporary Botanical Thought, p.61.”
“DON’T USE THE FOSSILS, Mark Ridley, Oxford, “…a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. …In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.” New Scientist, June, 1981, p.831″
Tim there are plenty more. All saying the same thing. Evolution doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Nor a bone, recent or otherwise.
“Colin Patterson, B.M.N.H. “Well, it seems to me that they have accepted that the fossil record doesn’t give them the support they would value so they searched around to find another model and found one.
…When you haven’t got the evidence, you make up a story that will fit the lack of evidence.” Darwin’s Enigma, p.100″
“Gould & Eldredge, “In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had previously been simply embarrassing; ‘all these years of work and I haven’t found any evolution’. (R.A. Reyment) Paleobiology, Vol.3, p.136.”
Taken from the ICR website.

I want to personally thank Gerald for the dialectical process made by him and Tim that made me even surer that religion is a real complete hoax.
I could see now clearly that there’s no or little use to explain science or the truth to religious people due to their stubbornness in order to defend their beliefs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like it if there was a god. But if the god mentioned in the so called holy scriptures is turned out to be a hoax then why would we have to defend it? And further more defending it with a bunch of false research and statements too? Wow.

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